What do you do when the only spark in your marriage comes from the candles on your five year anniversary cake? Kate and Damien were the perfect couple and good at loving each other–until they tied the knot. Now the only thing they're good at is fighting about who let the laundry sit, or debating the guilty party behind the burnt mac and cheese. After five years of dating her husband, Kate thought she had found her perfect match, but as the arguments become serious, the rift between her and Damien grows and she finds herself falling for the stranger next door, Cy Edwards.

Before long, Cy and Kate are seeing each other, until one day Kate finds herself on the opposite end of the pole–she catches Damien with another woman! Is it too late to salvage her marriage? Will Kate and Damien make it through "for better or for worse"?

BOOK EXCERPTS

“You should have kicked his ass!” Kate Strathmore snapped.

“What? For staring at you? You’ve got to be kidding me, Kate! That’s not even practical! We were at a restaurant in front of a hundred people and just because some random guy wants to stare at you I’m supposed to go all Kung Fu on him?” her husband retorted.

“You’re not supposed to be practical where I’m concerned, Damien. Or are you one of those sicko husbands who get flattered when other people stare at their wives?”

Damien sputtered. “He was just looking! I mean, it’s not like he walked over and touched your ass or anything.”

Kate crossed her arms angrily over her chest and thrust out her chin, staring out the window as they drove past an expanse of well-manicured lawns.

Through her peripheral vision, she saw Damien rake an agitated hand through his hair as he pulled the car into the driveway of their ranch house. He cut the engine, then turned to glare at her. She refused to look in his direction.

“Don’t shut me out!” he growled.

“Well, what the heck am I supposed to do? It’s only been five years and you don’t even care about me the way you used to. Before,you used to pick fights with men if they so much as glanced at me and here this…this burly…dorky…psychopath was staring me down from across the room and you didn’t even bat an eye!”

“What…whe…ughh!” Damien howled, banging his head against the steering wheel.

“Stop howling like a banshee,” she admonished.

Damien turned his head sideways in mid bang and glared at her, his mouth agape. He looked so ridiculous with his hair out of place, head tilted sideways and eyes bugging out that Kate would have been tempted to laugh if she weren’t so mad.

“I even howl wrong?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.” She shoved open the car door and made her way toward the house.

“Me being ridiculous? Me?” Damien scrambled out after her. “Why can’t you ever think of anything positively? Why can’t you be flattered with the fact that a man was admiring your beauty?”

Kate stopped short to glare at her husband through narrowed eyes. “Admiring my beauty by staring at my boobs and winking at me in front of you? That should have been an insult to you,” she jabbed his chest with a finger, “not a compliment to me!”

Damien sputtered and threw his hands up again. Kate turned on her heel and continued walking. She gave an annoyed swipe at her frizzy hair as a bug buzzed over it.

This damned spring weather was getting on her last nerves. It was always rainy and the humidity in the air had her long strands of auburn locks sticking up in frizzy puffs no matter how much styling product she used. A beautiful ending to a beautiful night.She rolled her eyes in agitation.

She shuffled through her handbag and located the house key, then shoved it in the hole and jiggled until she felt the lock release. She’dpushed the door open a crack when she felt an insistent tap on her shoulders. Damien stood behind her, his arms crossed. It was obvious he wasn’t letting this drop.

“I’m still waiting. What exactly was it you wanted me to do about that big, ugly, psychopath staring at your tits? Something rational, please.”

“Why should I have to tell you what to do? You should have reacted. I can’t tell you how to react.”

“Oh, and that’s why you tell me what my facial reactions should look like during sex.”

“ Excuse me, I don’t tell you what your facial reactions should look like during sex. I just can tell that sometimes you’re not into it from the look on your face!”

Damien’s voice rose to a bellow. “It’s the same damned thing!”

“No. It’s. NOT!” Kate spun around and pushed the door open the rest of the way.

The living room lights flickered on automatically. “Surprise…?” a few uncoordinated voices called out with uncertainty.

Kate stopped short and Damien bumped into her.

They stood, staring flabbergasted at the crowd in the living room as the familiar faces of friends and family greeted them. The crowd of people gazed back at them, their expressions solid evidence of having heard every word of the squabble.

Amongst the group, Kate caught the expressions of her mother and father-in-law as well as her own parents. Her mother’s face took on a shade of beet red and her father studied his fingernails with deep interest. Her mother-in-law looked concerned and her father-in-law, unperturbed by the entire debacle, eyed the cake on the coffee table with hunger.

Kate didn’t move. She felt Damien breathing down her neck.

Her sister, Gabriela, pushed herself forward from the shell-shocked crowd and gave them a nervous smile.Shecleared her throat before launching into an off pitch rendition of the birthday tune, Happy Anniversary toYou. She clapped her hands, urging everyone else to join in.The voices grew stronger as they all participated in clapping away the awkwardness.

The song came to an end and Kate and Damien were greeted with another overbearing silence. Their loved ones watched them with interest as though they half expected them to continue fighting and throw each other on the floor in a fit of punches and kicks.

Kate eyed her husband andsuppressed another eye-roll as she cleared her throat. Obviously the idiot wasn’t going to say anything so it would be up to her to break the silence.

Whenever the literary German dives into ... Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
Atlantic with his verb in his mouth. Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court